Squash Pancakes

A friend wondered to me last October, whilst offering me some fresh, hot butternut squash and feta bread, “Do you remember when no one had even heard of butternut squash and then suddenly they were everywhere?’

They will never (could NEVER) replace potatoes in my life but they’re chock full of carb-y, vitamin-y goodness as well as being so pretty. Here are some being stored in the chilly confines of the parental loft at Christmas:

Undeterred by yesterday’s efforts, I’ve chosen part of my lunch from the vegetable chapter of Beverly Pepper’s Potluck Cookery (Faber and Faber, 1955).

Mix squash with salt, pepper, marjoram, cheese and green pepper. Shape into small cakes. Roll in seasoned flour, then in egg, and finally in bread crumbs. Repeat, flour, egg and breadcrumbs. Fry in hot dripping until brown on both sides.

This is a side dish – serves 2 – 3.

Notes

These are a bugger to handle – the mashed squash, combined with the wet pepper refused to be shaped into small cakes and made for very sticky work. In the end, they only got one round on the flour/egg/breadcrumb circuit. Once in the pan however, they held together well.

Obviously the only way to get bacon dripping is to fry some bacon, although I added a little corn oil as 2 rashers doesn’t yield 4 tablespoons which is too much anyway.

The recipe produced 5 pancakes of ½ inch thick and 2 inches diameter.

(The red glop is tomato and red onion sauce)

Conclusion

I would describe the results as delicious but not perfect. I wasn’t completely sold on the flavour. I felt red pepper would have been better than green and in that case, some sort of chilli would have been more appropriate seasoning. The green pepper could have been omitted entirely and more herbs added. I loved the small amount of cheese – it improved both the flavour and the texture. As the batter was so wet, I think next time I will experiment with rolling them only in flour or breadcrumbs.

A final criticism would be that these created a large amount of washing up. I discovered after taking my empty plate back to the kitchen and surveying the mess, that I have a bias: Only recipes which start from scratch and which result in a whole meal, should involve so many pieces of equipment.